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DK. BILVANUS P. THOMPSON, F.R.S., ON 



legend has grown up amongst every primitive people around 

 any hero of commanding personality. 



To such a one the pious legends woven about the Christ will 

 •appear just as natural, just as right in their place, and just as 

 unnecessary of belief now, as any of those narrated of Moses, 

 or Buddha, or Plato. In a primitive people the ascription of 

 such legends was one way of expressing sincere adoration, a 

 pious act quite irrespective of the historic facts. There is a frame 

 of mind which regards the adoring legend, because it is adoring, 

 as of vastly greater moment than the historic truth, because 

 it is true. Those who have never inquired into this wonderfully 

 interesting branch of human history, or who have never even 

 attempted to comprehend that frame of mind, cannot under- 

 stand how the reverent seeker after truth in these days can 

 frankly admit that some of the things supposed by our 

 forefathers to be a vital part of religion are myth, and yet 

 not lose his reverence towards those earlier ones whose pious 

 hearts wove, repeated, believed, and were even edified and 

 spiritually strengthened by believing those legends. To each 

 age its own conception of the divine stands to serve its own 

 purpose. And the age which finds it better to hold simple 

 unvarnished truth than to weave pious fancies, must not harshly 

 condemn the age which thought it greater honour to God to 

 weave these pious fancies than even to ask what the facts 

 were. It will not do for the twentieth century to rise up in 

 judgment against the second century, nor for the Western mind 

 to rivet condemnation upon the Eastern, because the Eastern 

 mind of the second century took different views of life and 

 truth from these the Western of the twentieth century takes. To 

 the uninstructed of all ages that which is abnormal has always 

 presented itself as something sacied. To the oriental mind, 

 untutored in science, the abnormal still always presents 

 something calling forth an instinct of reverential worship. Of 

 very recent growth, even in the better educated of westerns, is 

 the idea of the reign of law. We forget too often that in this \ 

 respect a whole chasm lies between the England of Edward VI. 

 and the England of Edward VII. Only those who either fail 

 to understand or else despise the reign of law and all that the 

 phrase connotes, can continue to suppose that the truth of any 

 doctrine can be established by the occurrence of some abnormal 

 phenomenon. So convinced are all the clearest thinkers 

 on this point, so scrupulous in their regard for ascertained 

 truths, that they will rightly demand for any abnormal 

 occurrence a testimony of evidence much more strict and 



